


Just a Number

by Starofwinter



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Depersonalization, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mentioned Fives/Tup, post-biochip arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 22:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10371606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starofwinter/pseuds/Starofwinter
Summary: Numbers don't hurt.





	

ARC-5555 was dead.  He’d died in his captain’s arms after being shot in the heart.  He didn’t understand though - he’d always believed that after death, they would get something like peace.  That he would see his husband again.  He’d been looking forward to it.  As long as he got the message through to the captain - what message, he couldn’t remember anymore, he couldn’t remember anything - he was fucking happy to go.  

This wasn’t peace, this was - this was hell.  He didn’t think he’d ever been in this much pain, but then, there was so much he couldn’t remember.  He could feel something in his head with him, demanding information.   _NO_ , he shouts back with a thought, and pain courses through him again; it feels like his entire _self_ is being ripped apart.  He doesn’t even know if the information is still secret, if the war is still raging, if there is a point to all this except to test him, but he can’t break.  He was bred to endure this.  So as more memories of his life are ripped away, he endures it and he prays he will earn his peace.

He says his designation as many times he can, clinging to the only thing they’ve left him with.  He won’t give them a single bit of information, not if he can do a damn thing about it.  And isn’t that damned funny?  The more they tear out of him, the less he can give them.  He’s an ARC, his numbers are four fives… fives, that has kind of a nice ring to it.  In his better moments, he wonders if he could just call himself that.  It’d be a waste not to, really.  But he’s not allowed to have a name.  That’s one more bit of information he can give them.  He won’t give them the satisfaction.  So he refuses to name himself.  He is ARC-5555.  Just a number.  Numbers don’t  _ hurt _ , they don’t grieve for what was never theirs in the first place.  They don’t remember love, or lost husbands, or brothers.  They’re just numbers.


End file.
